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How Strong Is Your Dot Com?

Recently, I received an intriguing e-mail from Chase Galbraith of the Jackson-Shaw Company in Dallas, who is working with a large dot com tenant. "Like many other firms in the Internet and communications fields, they aren't making money but have established numerous strategic alliances and have a very large market capitalization. ... I was wondering how investors and lenders were looking at these companies as tenants? Who are the players?"

And, on a smaller scale, Gary Breen of Colliers International in Oakland, CA, describes a recent lease that he completed with a startup dot com. "They are currently in 3,000 square feet of space and hiring 5 new employees per week." Plus, it turns out that they're hiring all Generation Y gamers. (No, I don't know exactly what Generation Y is -- just younger than Generation X slackers, I think.) ... So imagine that you're proudly touring a prospective lender around that property. "Oh yeah, that dot com tenant is real strong." You gotta smile.

Let me throw one other factor into the pot. ... Some of these dot com facilities (like warehouses) are really in the boondocks. Take Amazon.com, which is building almost three million square feet of new warehouses in 1999. OK, McDonough, GA, is located near Atlanta, and Fernley, NV, is near Reno. But Coffeyville, KS? (Coffeyville is kind of between Wichita and Tulsa near the Oklahoma border.) Hmm. Hey, maybe there's a big demand for state-of-the-art e-commerce facilities in Coffeyville.

Question... How are you convincing landlords to sign dot com leases or lenders to finance buildings anchored by dot coms? ... Send e-mail to me at , and I'll report more in a future Dispatch. Thanks!

Sneak Preview... Check out the draft program for PikeNet 2000, "Commercial Real Estate Internet Strategies" -- Apr 5-7, 2000, in San Francisco... Meet the players and exchange ideas for net gain.

--Peter